This invention relates generally to a method for scanning channels and displaying information relative to the scanned channels on visual display screens, and more particularly to a method for displaying chronological scanned channel information on display screens wherein intuitive and user friendly visual techniques express the relative chronological position of each scanned channel. The invention is particularly applicable in television programming and related visual information display in the fields of terrestrial, cable, satellite and other distribution of video programming, and in the visual display of computer information such as internet, files, programs, and documents.
Various methods of displaying visual information on display screens, such as those utilized in computer and television, are well known in the art. Since the intent of a visual display is to convey information to the viewer of the display, various prior art formats have evolved which are considered efficient when used for the display of particular types of visual information. For example, movies on television are generally presented using a full screen format, whereas temperature data for cities around the country are usually presented in a list format. Hybrid examples are also common, such as the full screen presentation of a sports event with the score and other numeric data of interest occupying a small area of the screen. Computer program data is commonly presented in a list, table, or matrix format and handheld remote controls and many computer programs utilize interactive menus and dropdown lists in combination with icon symbols to achieve the desired user interactivity.
Similar display formats are also utilized when the results of video scanning operations are presented on visual display screens. For example, when television channels are scanned the usual visual presentation is a full screen full motion picture of the, channel currently tuned in. This method does not provide video information about previously scanned channels on the display, and thus the viewer must remember which channels he has gone through and their relative location chronologically with. respect to the currently displayed channel.
The scanning of computer documents, files and programs is often accomplished in a similar manner and the item displayed currently is a full screen presentation. Once again the viewer must remember the chronological distance back to some desired (and passed) item.
One prior art approach to overcome this problem has been to divide the screen into equal divisions in the vertical or horizontal directions, or in both directions simultaneously, so as to allow some chronological information to be displayed. This represents an improvement in the sense that more events can be simultaneously displayed, but it does not provide an intuitive sense of what is recent and what is old. This approach also suffers from the fact that the larger the number of subdivisions the harder it is for the viewer to see current and recent images.
While prior art methods do allow for scanning of television channels and other information content, a visual presentation of past scanned items is often not provided concurrent with the most recently scanned item. As pointed out above, the viewer must deal with this deficiency. The viewer is required to remember a past channel number, or several channel numbers, that were thought to be possible viewing choices when seen but were not selected at that time. So either the viewer must remember past channels of potential interest, or start scanning backwards in an attempt to relocate them. Backwards relocation scanning can be unrewarding, since the visual content of the sought channel will in all likelihood have changed since it was last seen. This adds an element of viewer frustration. Additionally, viewers typically have more trouble remembering as they grow older, and older viewers may already be somewhat uncomfortable with the latest high tech xe2x80x9cgadgets.xe2x80x9d These things can add up to extensive discomfort for the older viewer when channel surfing.
It has been pointed out above that one prior art approach to the problem of displaying a history of scanned channels, past and present, is to partition the display screen into numerous boxes. One disadvantage of this approach is that the current channel is reduced in size, which is a problem for viewers who do not see well or who do not like the concentration required to observe small images. Once again this problem may be disproportionately found in the older age groups who have a higher percentage of eye problems.
In light of the above discussions it is clear that there exists a need in the art to be able to provide improved visual presentation of the results of scanned items such as television channels, internet sites, computer documents, files, and programs. In particular, there is a need to display scanning results in a manner such that chronological information is retained for each scanned item, while allowing the current item to be easily viewed.
It is accordingly an object of the invention to be able to provide improved visual information to a viewer of an AV system concerning recently scanned or viewed channels and programs.
According to the present invention, a method and structure visually provides information concerning programs or channels recently viewed on a display screen of an audio/visual (AV) system. The viewer uses a remote control device to invoke a scan mode in which a plurality of available channels of information are sequentially displayed to the viewer on the display screen. A current program and information about the current program, such as type of program, title, station, duration, etc., is then displayed on the display screen. If the viewer does not select the current program within a predetermined period of time, the current program fades out into a spiral formation at the same time that views being displayed in a plurality of positions of the spiral are rotated to free-up the position reserved for the most recently viewed program. The current program is then displayed in the most recently viewed position of the spiral. If, however, the viewer does select the current program, the scan mode is aborted, causing the spiral formation to fade out and be replaced by the selected program being displayed on the display screen in real-time and full-size.